Skinny Love
by burnouts
Summary: They're doomed from the start-Hufflepuffs and Slytherins don't mix. -LucyLysander, with touches of LucyLorcan and LysanderOC. One-shot. Rated for attempted-suicide.


**prompts: **sleeping pills, winding, a long time ago, thunderstruck, & thunderstruck - metric

* * *

**-x-**

**SKINNY LOVE**  
_come on skinny love, what happened here?_

**i.**

they say love doesn't kill.

**/**

they meet in potions class during their seventh year.

they both knew of the other before, but had never spoken. then suddenly hufflepuffs and slytherins are sharing a potions class and he is her new partner.

she's rubbish at potions. he doesn't mind.

**/**

"you paint?" she asks, after he mentions it, and he nods, flicking blonde hair out of his blue eyes.

"yeah, a little bit." there's a hint of a smile at the corner of his lips and she flushes because — _oh my fucking god he's _looking _at me!_

it's school-girl-ish of her, but it makes her want to giggle.

"that's cool," she murmurs, her eyes finding the table below interesting.

"maybe i'll show you sometime." he suggests casually, and when she looks up she sees he's looking at her like he looks at the girls in their year before he snogs them.

she can barely manage an "okay."

she doesn't see his smirk.

**/**

he paints the canvas skies blue with flecks of purple and gold, and she's thunderstruck by his talent. he flashes her a crooked smile and puts the paint brush down. she should know the second he presses his lips to hers that this is a bad idea.

he's cheating on his girlfriend with lucy.

lucy is the other woman.

but it seems his kisses have the ability to make a girl forget all the bad stuff.

**/**

he dumps gabriella for lucy, and she thinks — _oh, he loves me! _but lucy is just a little hufflepuff girl, masquerading as a seventeen year old. she should have learned a long time ago most boys only want one thing.

/

it only takes two months and a constant stream of "_i love you_s" and other rubbish, for her to give him the one thing that she has; the one thing of her childhood she has left — her virginity.

he's rough and harsh and tells her to keep still or to move this way or that way, and she regrets doing it the second it's done.

but she can't take it back, and anyway, he "loves" her.

**/**

"first times always suck," rose says sympathetically, but molly shakes her head.

"the way you described the way he treated you, lucy — it sounds like he doesn't respect or even care for you at all." there's worry in her voice and a frown on her lips.

lucy sees past the worry, and gets anger, because deep down, lucy knows she's right, but she loves him, and she doesn't want molly to be right.

"you're just jealous! ever since we were little you've always gotten upset when i got something you didn't! well, just stop! this time i'm not going to let you wreck what i've got."

she shrieks in front of all of hogsmeade, then turns and walks away.

**/**

the path back to hogwarts is winding, and she feels like it'll last forever, until finally she reaches the castle.

she heads towards the dungeons, needing to see lysander. she sees him alright — with gabriella, the girl he had broken up with months ago.

she watches as his lips crush onto hers, and his hand trails up her shirt, and then, oh look he's talking to her — "i love you."

"it's a lie."

she doesn't recognize her own voice. surely she's suppose to sound weak and in pain, but she sounds strong this time.

they jump apart, and he looks torn between which relationship to risk, so while he silently argues with himself, she keeps talking.

"he'll tell you he loves you," she says, walking closer. "but then he'll cheat on you. and i guess this is karma, you know? because he cheated on you with me, and now he's cheating on you with me.

"but whatever, because i'm done."

she turns and walks away.

**/**

later, he finds her and begs and begs her to take him back — he's _ohso _sorry and "lucy i swear to you it'll never happen again," and she's such a hufflepuff, and she wants this more than anything, so she forgives him.

"okay," she nods.

**ii.**

after hogwarts, they move in together.

it's a bad idea. neither care.

**/**

they're relationship goes bad fast. he cheats on her several times, and she snogs his brother and nearly sleeps with his best friend several times to retaliate. when molly speaks to her, her voice is laced with unspoken disapproval.

_this isn't love._

lucy doesn't care anymore — lysander taught her that; how not to care. and damn has she come a long way since hufflepuff house.

(she won't give up on this relationship because she's selfish).

**/**

"you're an ass!" she screams, and there's smashing glass and oh look, she's broken another lamp, and there goes the vase audrey sent them.

this is what happens when she catches him cheating — it's an every-week occurrence. he thinks she secretly likes fucking up their house and calling him names. she thinks he's right, but would never say it aloud.

lysander spews his usual rubbish — "i'm sorry, lucy! you know she means nothing to me! i love you." and that's all it takes for her to let him throw her against the wall and snog her, before his hands start wandering south and clothes are shed.

**/**

twisted.

that's the perfect word to describe their relationship.

because one second they're physically fighting and the next they're having sex, and then he cheats on her and she cheats on him, and the cycle starts again.

it's twisted, sure, but that doesn't mean despite everything they don't love each other. they do love each other — they love each other so much it hurts; but neither knows how to love, and because of that, they fall apart.

but they won't let it go; they can't accept that continuing this relationship is a bad idea.

they're each others' air now.

**/**

lorcan comes over once or twice.

lysander is out both times — fucking other girls and getting wasted in muggle bars, lucy thinks bitterly — so without warning she kisses lorcan. lorcan, who's quiet and smart, a ravenclaw she knew well in hogwarts.

he goes to pull away, but her hands are wandering, and no man can resist lucy — she's not a hufflepuff anymore, she's wild and out of control, and she learnt from the best.

they sleep together on her and lysander's bed, and once lorcan is gone and lysander is back, she wastes no time in throwing it in his face.

**/**

"he was a lot better than you," she smirks, and lysander lunges for her, his hands go around her neck and he pins her against the bed. his eyes are like dying embers and god, why does it feel so good to be pressed against him like this?

"and he did this thing with his tongue—" he slaps her hard and she spits in his face.

he lets her neck go, and she throws herself at him, all of her one-hundred pounds behind it. she knocks into him hard, but he doesn't even stagger.

"you're such a prick!" she screams. "i hate you! i fucking hate you," she goes to shove him, but he catches her hands and pulls her into a long, steamy kiss.

when they pull away, he mutters against her forehead — "we're screwed up."

she silently agrees.

**/**

after that exchange, lucy doesn't know what to do with herself. should she stay? should she go? would they be better off without the other? could they live without the other? she isn't sure.

all she knows is she loves him too much to walk away now.

**/**

"i made you dinner," she grins as he enters the flat. the grin falls from her face once she sees the bright red lipstick on the collar of his shirt and smells the perfume that is lingering on his.

"yum," he murmurs, walking towards her.

she scowls and grabs his collar where the stain is. "couldn't clean up after yourself? couldn't pretend for one fucking day that you can go a bit without fucking some cheap sluts?"

he grins. "i didn't fuck you today."

she screams. "i fucking hate you! you're such an arse! it's valentines day, for merlinsake." she shoves him hard, and grabs the glass plate nearest to her, only to throw it at the ground.

anger pulses through her veins.

and this is their relationship — anger and hate and spite and hate sex and make-up sex, and they love each other, but they don't properly show it.

**/**

"i'm sorry," he murmurs in her ear later, once they're in bed and she's trying to pretend to be asleep, because she doesn't care for his apologies. "lucy," he murmurs, his fingers trailing over her shoulders, her neck, and her cheeks.

"what?" she mutters, her voice muffled by the pillow her cheek is resting on.

"i love you."

"i love you," she says, before her eyes fall closed.

**/**

**iii.**

when she wakes up, she's alone.

she assumes he's just in another room, but a sweep of the house tells otherwise. then she just assumes he went out to get breakfast or something, but once she walks back into her bedroom, her eyes land on the bed table on his side of the bed.

there's a note.

**/**

_we're bad for each other, lucy._

she can't breathe.

_all we do is throw things and call each other names. _

she doesn't want to breathe.

_this isn't love. _

he's gone.

_this is hate. this is spite. this is anger. _

he's not coming back.

_this isn't love. not real, honest to god love. _

she's alone.

_i cheat on you, you cheat on me, and then we rub it in the others' face._

he's gone and she's alone.

_i'm sorry._

**/**

she can't live.

not without him.

she doesn't want to.

she's been with him for four years. he's her life, now. but now he's gone and he's taken everything that she is with him, and she just doesn't want to live. there's an unbearable ache weighing heavily on her chest, and it's stupid of her to want to die because a boy left her, but he wasn't just any boy — he was _the _boy.

and he left.

_"sleeping pills," _she thinks aloud.

**/**

she pours ten, twenty, thirty into her hands and just sits there staring at them for a while. then she calls molly, right before she's going to do it.

"hello?"

"i'm sorry," is all she says.

she presses the END CALL button and then pours several pills into her mouth, swallowing, swallowing, swallowing, until there's nothing left to swallow, and MOLLY is flashing across the screen of her phone but she ignores it.

just as she's downed the last of them and her eyes are starting to feel heavy, the door is busted open, and molly and oh, is that lysander? she thinks.

"you came back," she grins up at lysander, but there's a small frown on his face, and she knows a second later that's not lysander.

her eyes close as someone starts screaming.

**/**

she gasps as her eyes fly open.

white everywhere.

is she dead? she wonders, but then there's that familiar buzz of a hospital, and _oh_, she's just in saint mungos.

"you're going to be okay." molly sits beside her, her hair greasy and her eyes tired, and there are tear stains on her cheek. she sounds like she's trying to convince herself more than she is lucy.

"i am." she says, to reassure molly.

but the truth is, she's not.

she doesn't want to be alive.

**/**

she wakes up screaming three weeks, twenty-one days in a row — "lysander! lysander!" and in the hazy hours of pre-dawn, lorcan comes, and when she asks "is it really you," he always says "yes, it's lysander," because it makes her happy.

he crawls into bed with her and holds her until she falls back to sleep and she thinks after she's released from the "I'M-A-DANGER-TO-MYSELF-AND-OTHERS" ward (also known as the psych-ward) that maybe she fell for the wrong twin all those years ago.

but she's too drugged up on intense anti-depressants to really decipher this thought further.

**/**

and love doesn't kill — but heartbreak nearly does.

_help i'm alive_

**-x-**

* * *

**a/n: **the lyrics are parts of skinny love by bon iver and help i'm alive by metric, respectively. :)


End file.
